Let it be known that the Atari Jaguar can no longer be thought of as the console that permanently knocked the classic game publisher out of the market. After numerous delays and years of speculation, the Atari VCS series of home consoles is set to debut this fall, and excited fans of the old-school company can finally place their pre-orders.
After an ambitious 2018 Indiegogo campaign raised just over three million dollars for the project, consumers were excited to see what the one-time undisputed king of console gaming would bring to the table. Unfortunately, after a long series of setbacks and rumors of the project's demise, it seemed as if the VCS would either be doomed to the same fate as the OUYA, assuming it was released at all.
However, as tumultuous as the first half of 2020 has been for just about everyone, Atari finally seems to have gotten their ducks in a row, announcing that both versions of their new system would launch in the fall, with an expected pre-order delivery date of November 27.
While it’s nice to know that Atari hasn’t given up after all these years, there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical about their new product. Once again, comparisons to the failed OUYA experiment are almost unavoidable, especially given the brand’s commitment to the idea of creating and sharing custom gaming content, something the aforementioned micro-console heavily pushed ahead of its 2013 release. Additionally, it’s still worth questioning how well products like these can fare in the modern gaming climate. Consumers didn’t bite back when things like Sony’s PlayStation TV or Amazon’s Fire TV launched, and it’s hard to imagine that, with the next console generation on the horizon, gamers will be all that hyped about another glorified Raspberry Pi system.
More concerning is the apparent price point. Those who pre-order the VCS 800—the higher-powered product—will be expected to put up $390, and those opting for the budget VCS 400 model will be forking over $250. This seems pretty extreme given the system’s lackluster specs; it packs AMD Raven Ridge APU, an AMD Radeon RX Vega 3 GPU, eight gigs of DDR4 RAM, and 32 gigs of built-in storage space in the more advanced model, this thing likely won’t even compare to some of the most entry-level PC builds. Its retro aesthetic may tempt some, but, with rumors suggesting that Sony and Microsoft’s new consoles may be somewhere around the $500 range, picking up one of these things for just a hundred bucks less seems ridiculous.
It’s also worth noting that the VCS, though not really a direct competitor to the PS5 and Xbox Series X, does face competition against things like the Nintendo Switch or the forthcoming Intellivision Amico. Obviously, we’d love to see Atari rebound and reclaim some of the glory they held decades ago, but, at the moment, it will be an uphill battle.